Abstract
Socio-spatial segregation of immigrants or other ethno-racial groups in Western cities has been extensively investigated. In the recent decades, China has also witnessed a substantial growth of international immigrants. In the city of Guangzhou, one of the most famous destinations in China for transnational migration, the spatial presence of international migrants has received scholarly attention, mostly focusing on single racial groups. In this study, we present two cartograms using cellphone data to visualize the spatial distributions of multiple groups of international migrants, namely, the African migrants, the European and North American migrants, and the Japanese and Korean migrants, in Guangzhou. The cartograms indicate that the spatial distributions of migrants from Africa and those from the European, North American, and East Asian countries are considerably divided in Guangzhou, suggesting a possible ethno-racial segregation among the international migrants in this Chinese city. Such an issue is largely under-researched in the existing literature.
China has witnessed a substantial growth of international immigrants in the recent decades. Guangzhou is among the Chinese cities hosting international migrants, particularly serving as a famous destination for African migrants (Bodomo, 2012; Li et al., 2012; Tan et al., 2022). Meanwhile, migrants from Japan, South Korea, and European and North American countries have also been observed in Guangzhou (Cai and Su, 2021; Liu et al., 2011). The existing studies of international migrants in Guangzhou predominantly focused on single racial groups, necessitating further attempts to simultaneously investigate international migrants from different origins.
We apply cellphone data to visualize the spatial distributions of three groups of international migrants, namely, the African migrants, the European and North American (ENA) migrants, and the Japanese and South Korean (JSK) migrants, in Guangzhou. The data contain anonymous information of time and geographic coordinates of cellphone users’ positions, as well as the users’ nationality that was identified from their identity documents (e.g., passports) used to register for SIM-cards. The cellphone users who held foreign nationality and had stayed in Guangzhou for over 1 month are identified as foreign migrants. We utilize the data of nighttime (i.e., from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.) in November 2019 to represent the phone users’ residential locations.
Figure 1 presents two cartograms regarding the spatial distributions of the three migrant groups based on the spatial unit of sub-districts. Both cartograms are distorted in proportional to the number of African migrants. Meanwhile, in sub-Figures 1(a) and 1(b), all the sub-districts are shaded in proportional to the numbers of ENA migrants and JSK migrants, respectively. Cartograms of spatial distributions of the African, European and North American, and Japanese and South Korea migrants in Guangzhou.
Accordingly, the central-city areas exhibit high concentration of the African migrants, evidenced by the substantial exaggeration of sub-districts. Meanwhile, the ENA migrants are distributed in a quite different manner. Several sub-districts in the suburban areas, suppressed in size while shaded with dark purple color (sub-Figure 1(a)), exhibit high concentration of the ENA migrants and yet low presence of the African migrants. By contrast, several sub-districts in the central-city areas, extremely exaggerated in size while shaded with light color, exhibit high concentration of the African migrants and yet low presence of the ENA migrants. A similar contrast can be found regarding the JSK migrants, evidenced by sub-Figure 1(b) where several sub-districts are suppressed in size while shaded with dark purple color, and vice versa.
Overall, the spatial distributions of migrants from Africa and those from the European, North American, and East Asian countries are considerably divided in Guangzhou, suggesting a possible ethno-racial segregation.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Guangzhou Bureau of Science and Technology (202201011230 and 2023A04J1984) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (42271204 and 42301222).
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy reasons but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.